Revenge
by Prosper-the-XVIII
Summary: "MI6 secretary Eve Moneypenny has been stabbed in the back by an unidentified Spanish female." Post-Skyfall. Lila Silva, daughter of Raoul Silva, has badly injured and almost killed Eve, murdered another two people and vowed to do the same to every MI6 agent she can lay hands on to avenge her father. It is up to 007, M, Eve and Q to stop her before she kills anyone else...
1. Falling From Cloud 9

**For this story to work:**

**a) M never died at the end of Skyfall. It is set around a month after the events of the most recent Bond movie, and M is on her way home after her first day back at MI6 following taking a month off to recover from the injuries she sustained during the final battle at 007's childhood home. **

**b) Silva had a daughter. I shall say no more on the subject. **

**c) I have referenced Johnny English a little. I know that that is MI7 not MI6, but I was running out of character names for something. **

* * *

M grimaced as she tried her hardest to see anything through the heavy sleet pelting at the windscreen of her black Mercedes. She couldn't drive a pig with a stick at the best of times, and the weather was hardly helping. M hated November. Aside from the fact that it was the month of her birthday, and hardly made her feel good about her age to say the least, the weather was always appalling and she hated the way people were constantly banging on about Christmas now that it was the month before it. In the vague hope that some kind of Little Mix tat, or whatever the hell it was that Eve was always listening to nowadays that always made M grimace when she heard it wasn't going to come on, M switched on the radio.  
_"It's five forty-five and you're listening to Newsbeat with Chris Smith. The following program may be unsuitable for young children and more squeamish listeners. Our top story tonight; MI6 secretary Eve Moneypenny has been left in a critical condition after she was stabbed in the back by an unidentified Spanish female, who is thought to be Lila Silva, daughter of the notorious recently deceased cyber-terrorist, Raoul Silva. Newsbeat's Sonali Shah has more..."_

M floored the break, nearly taking the bonnet off of the aged Transit van behind her. The man driving gave her an 'up yours' gesture and mouthed "BITCH!" at her, but M ignored this and pulled into the car park of the Tesco a few yards away from them. The radio was still blaring. "_It was around four o'clock today when Eve Moneypenny, secretary of the MI6 chairwoman, Evelyn Cameron, was making her way home from work, when a masked woman in her early twenties jumped out from behind a bin and plunged a hunting knife deep into the twenty-four year old's lower back. Eve is currently undergoing surgery at London BMI Hospital to remove the nine-inch blade from her spine, but it is thought that it is likely that she will remain paralyzed either completely or from the waist downwards due to excessive damage to her spinal chord. Colleagues of Ms Moneypenny Gareth Mallory, James Bond, Pamela Thornton, Johnny English, the Prime Minister, her parents and close family and both the Greater Manchester and Scotland Yard police forces are urging the woman who assaulted Ms. Moneypenny to come forward on charges of assault and attempted murder. An eyewitness description of the woman charged with injuring Ms Moneypenny as being Eastern-European in appearance, medium built and rather top-heavy with long blonde hair and brown eyes. She allegedly speaks with a Spanish or Portuguese dialect. She is described to fit the description of the daughter of MI6 agent turned terrorist, Raoul Silva, allegedly named Lila Naomi Silva. A colleague and close friend of Ms Moneypenny, Mr James Bond, says: "It is a real shame what has happened to Eve, and I for one don't find it fair for someone like her who would never intentionally harm another living creature has been put through all this. Wherever you are, whoever did this to Eve; please come forward. It's just not right to do something like that to another person, especially someone like Eve." Evelyn Cameron, head of MI6, was unavailable to comment-"_

M turned it off. She was breathing heavily. She couldn't bear to hear any more. God, poor Eve. Since when did Silva have a daughter? Does this whole terrorism thing run in the family or something? Next thing, M would be finding out that this Lila girl's mother was in the Mafia. How could this have happened, and she didn't know about it? And now her name was all over national radio as well. Could this get any worse?


	2. I've Drowned & Dreampt This Moment

"Name?" The woman, who sounded as if she was from Bradford or somewhere like that behind the hospital's reception desk muttered, barely audible, due to the insane amount of chewing gum wedged in her mouth. Why did you have to practically register whenever you set foot in one of these places?  
"M," M said impatiently. She needed to see Eve, or at least find out what had happened to her.  
"S'at short for Emma, Emerald or Emily?"  
"No, just the singular letter."  
"Can't take that as a name. I'll put it down as Emily. Surname?"  
"Look, I work for MI6. I don't legally have a name, first or surname; on the subject I don't officially exist. My name is M. That's all that you need to know."  
"MI6 or not, love, I still can't put you down as M. I know you lot has those code names, and I think you're all completely off your heads. I've had a Q, a 007 and a Pegasus already today, I can't be doing with any more of this crap. Now I want a name, and a real one this time or I'm afraid you're going to have to leave." This was so obviously rehearsed, M thought she was going to physically explode. Instead, she put on a smile that probably looked more like a pained grimace, and said through gritted teeth; "My full name is Evelyn Judith Marrion Isabel Cameron. I am registered here already."

"That's all I were asking for! Now who are you here to see?"

"Eve Sasha Moneypenny."  
"Ooh, I get it now. You's the one they was going on about on the radio, ain't you?"  
"Yes, I am," M said, lowering her voice about two octaves and sounding far more sinister. "Now may I point out that I am one of the highest-ranking women in Britain and potentially all of western Europe. And I for one do not take kindly to what MI6 do being referred to as, quote, 'a load of crap'. Am I clear?"  
"Oh, sorry I'm sure." The woman drawled sarcastically. "Did you say Eve Moneypenny? Who's she again?"  
M sighed. Idiots. There really were far too many of them in this day and age.  
"She was admitted today at around four o'clock after being stabbed in the back with a hunting knife," M confessed quietly. "Last thing I heard, she was in surgery to get the knife out of her spine. She works for me. I need to see her."  
"Okay, erm, spinal injuries, that'll be the...Mary Seacole wing, I reckon. Take the stairs at the end of the corridor to the sixth floor; your friend'll be through the third door to your right, okay?" She said, drawling out her words and putting on a false smile. M sighed.  
"I am seventy-four years old, I was admitted here less than a month ago due to the fact I was shot in the hip, and you're telling me to go up six flights of stairs? No thank you, I'll take the lift. Where is it?"  
It was the receptionist's turn to sigh now. "Second on your left, alright?"She still had that stupid smile on her face. M turned on her heel, and strode towards the lift. Really, some people really just shouldn't be allowed to work in hospitals...

* * *

Eve felt terrible. There really was no other way to describe it. Groggy, tired, sore, just about anything else along those lines. Her eyes wouldn't open and when they eventually did, then they were just slits,and she couldn't see anything but the vague outlines of James, M and Q, plus a woman who she was sure she had seen before, but couldn't place a name to. There was something digging into her side, and there was a searing pain in the small of her back. From there downwards...nothing. She couldn't feel or move her legs, and was starting to panic a little. She had no recollection of what had happened to her, and the thought that she could have broken her legs or worse fogged her mind. She didn't know what worse may be, and she actually wasn't sure that she wanted to find out either.  
"Eve?" She heard M's voice. "How are you feeling?"  
Eve had to force any kind of recognizable sound out of her mouth, and the harsh, gravelly moan that came out when she gritted her teeth and made herself speak was far from her own familiar voice. "I've certainly been better. What - what happened? Where am I?"  
She knew that someone was holding onto her hand, and when she saw James tense up and felt the grip of the person clinging to her tighten, she made the realization that it was in fact 007 himself. He was the one that spoke now. And what he said was something that Eve had never either wanted to or intended to hear in her life...

* * *

"I just want to die..." Eve sobbed, leaning on M. It was about midnight the day Eve had been stabbed, and the young woman had found out that it was unlikely that she would ever walk again, but was still far from coming to terms with the fact.  
"Eve, honey, I know. You're going to be okay..." M was close to tears herself by this point. Eve was sort of her confidant; M had on several occasions bared her soul to her secretary, but now it was Eve's turn to do the same. "It's not just the whole paralysis thing, even though that's kind of difficult to accept too. But I just feel like my life is _over, _even though, again, I feel like it's just beginning. I feel like I can never be h-happy again..."  
"Eve, honestly, I understand-"  
"No you _don't!_" Eve lashed out with her words. "N one can ever understand how I feel! You can't, nobody can! I-I was bloody _pregnant!"_


	3. When You're Gone

M had no idea what she might say. Eve looked up at her with large, pleading eyes. "Look, just go. I shouldn't've said that. Just go. Please. And don't tell Q..."

* * *

It was the next day, and although M was completely shattered, having been with Eve all night, she was still up and running, researching any information she could scrape about Lila Silva. So far, M had found out that this Lila character was twenty-three years old, younger than Eve herself, and had a previous criminal record for armed robbery during the London riots and possession of illegal plastic explosives. Jesus Christ, terrorism really did seem to be hereditary. M had been joking to try and boost her morale in the car, but it seemed to be almost true. Lila was the result of an affair or one-night stand between Silva and a long-dead showgirl named Martinique Vergara back in the nineteen eighties , and had been living on the island off the coast of Singapore that Silva leaked the six agent's identities onto YouTube from, until she had caught wind of her father's death a few weeks ago. She had seemingly been stalking Eve via Twitter and the iPhone app 'Find Friends' for a few days before she attacked her. M had her eyes glued to the screen of her laptop, and was knocking back coffee like there was no tomorrow, when Mallory came running in.  
"What is it this time?" M said, barely looking up.  
"M, open up the BBC News website. Don't ask questions, just do it."  
"Okay, but remember I give the orders. If I'm not around then it's Pamela's job. You have no space whatsoever on that pecking order, clear?"  
"M, that's not the case anymore. Just do it."  
M obliged, and the main article on the screen was titled 'MI6 Double-Murderer Named As Lila Silva." The photo was of mugshots of Lila, plus small photos of her second-in-command, Pamela Thornton and idiotic trainee agent, Johnny English. "What the hell? Where did double murderer spring up from?"  
Mallory looked grave. "It gets worse. Click on it."  
M thought she was going to explode, throw up or both at once if that was at all possible. She read the first paragraph aloud. "The woman guilty of stabbing MI6 worker Eve Moneypenny has been named as the prime suspect Lila Silva, but not after committing not one but two murders of MI6 officials. Miss Silva was caught on CCTV less than a minute after killing one person, mortally injuring another and leaving both to die. Second in command of the organisation, Pamela Thornton, otherwise known as Pegasus, and agent Johnny English were both stabbed by the terrorist's daughter; Mr. English was killed almost instantly, according to a witness, and Ms Thornton died later in hospital after losing approximately six liters of blood- oh my GOD! How did this HAPPEN?!"  
"I don't know. Buut... if Pamela's dead, then you need someone to fill her job. That's where I come in." Mallory produced a sheet of paper from behind his back, and M read the words "JOB APPLICTION" in block capitals at the top of the page. "Mallory, you give that here right now or I swear I'll-"  
All Mallory had to do was hold the paper at arm's length above his head. M folded her arms, fighting back tears brought on by her best friend/depute being killed. "Give it here. I won't jump for it. I'm not going to demean myself." Mallory cheekily raised an eyebrow. M was not a tall woman, in fact quite the opposite, barely clearing 5'2", compared to Mallory's 6'1", but seeing no other option, M leaped up, grabbing at it. "Give that here!"

* * *

**Sorry about the last bit. I know it's from 'A Young Doctor's Notebook' but I thought it was really funny and could honestly see M and Mallory doing it!**


	4. Not Giving In

_**{One Week Later}**_

"David," Eve pulled her lips away from Q's face. She had both her arms around his neck; he was holding her up with one arm and pulling at the back of her bra with the other. "I can't reach the conventional ones anymore; it unhooks in the front."  
"Oh," Q let go of Eve's underwear, and she slumped backwards, looking miserable.  
"David, really, I still love you; nothing can change that, but I don't feel like I can do this anymore, not after..." Eve's voice tailed off, and she gestured to her bottom half. Q turned over, and sighed. "Eve, no matter what happens, I'll-"  
"No," she muttered softly. "Look up a bit." And Q saw that both of Eve's hands were resting on her stomach. "Oh, you were-" She nodded, her face clouding with sadness. "It was yours. I knew all along, I was looking for a good time to say, but when it happened I knew that I had lost it; I didn't need to be told. I couldn't face telling you, and I figured that what you didn't know couldn't hurt you. But I couldn't keep it in. And to think that if it was a girl I was going to suggest Silvia for a name..." Eve broke down in tears, and Q put his hand on top of hers. "Oh, Eve, how could you not have told me? But it's okay. I swear as soon as I get my hands on this Lila character, I'm going to strangle her- wait, did you feel that?"  
"What, if by feel you mean that I think someone must be punching me in the stomach from the inside, then yes, I felt it."  
Q looked hard at Eve. "Hey, you weren't showing at all when it happened, were you?"  
"N-no. Ah, there it was again!"  
"Well, I think you might be a bit now. Whether that's normal or not, I don't know, but..."  
"David, ever since I came round, I've been feeling a bit sick. At first I thought I was just drugged up, but it's still not gone. Do you think-" Eve stared at Q with a faint glimmer of hope in her eyes. Q smiled. "Eve, I think you've got yourself a little fighter in there..."


	5. Dirty Free-For-All

**Sorry, that last chapter was complete fluff, but necessary for what I am intending to do with the story. It gets serious now; Lila is about to make her first cameo...**

* * *

M was walking slowly, dragging her feet with every step. She had been at Pamela's funeral, and she had already decided that she couldn't bear English's tomorrow. The death of two members of her staff, plus what had happened to Eve had near broken her.  
"Bond, quit following me." M saw Bond out of the corner of her eye. The agent had been walking behind her, but didn't speak. "Bond, I'm serious." Still no response. She shrugged, and kept walking, glancing behind her with every few steps. This went on for around five minutes, until she heard Bond's voice. "Duck."  
M whipped round, looking at him like he was completely mental. "You what?"  
"DUCK!" Bond repeated, far louder this time. But it was too late for M by the time he got the message across. A cat-like noise erupted from the blonde woman who flew at M from the side alley they were walking past and tackled her to the ground. M both felt and heard her hand jolt backwards, and pain exploded in her lower arm, but she ignored it. Someone was sitting on top of her, and when she opened her eyes, she saw the dark, forbidding eyes and high-boned features of none other than Lila Naomi Silva glaring back at her. Lila kept one hand pressed against M's chest, so she still couldn't move, but swung her lower half upwards, kicking Bond in the groin. He doubled over, and, still using her foot, Lila pushed him to the ground. She pinned M with one hand; Bond with the other, and hissed through her teeth in the exact same manner as Silva. Her voice was feminine and sugary sweet, but there was a malicious undertone in her soft Spanish accent. "Okay, I know that one of you killed my father, but who? Unless you tell me, I kill both of you." She bared her perfect white teeth in a smirk, and both M and Bond half expected her to plunge a hand into her mouth and pull them out, again, in the same way her father had, until both remembered that cyanide dissolving the muscle structure of your face wasn't hereditary. "Oh, not going to say, are we?" She sneered, and both M and Bond saw the gleam of a knife sticking out above the waistband of her tatty, low-slung jeans. She drew the weapon, and poised it above M's forearm. "Well, if you stay shut up, then part of her opens up!" Lila stuck the knife into M's arm, and she let out a low gasp of pain as the next in the Silva legacy tore a deep six-inch gash in M's forearm. Whilst Lila was turned away, James grabbed hold of a hank of her long blonde hair, pulled her head down and dragged it along the hard pavement. Lila let go of M quickly, collapsing at the sight of the blood running down her face from the massive graze in the side of her head. The two from MI6 stood up, Bond brushing himself down, M staring in disbelief at the enormous gash in her arm, an the fact that her hand was backwards. "Are you okay?" Bond said, picking up a now-unconscious Lila and throwing her over his shoulder. "Who'd have thought that Silva's daughter the knife murderer faints at the sight of her own blood?"  
"Not me, that's for certain. Good job I don't do that, look at the state of me!"  
Bond stared at M's arm, taking in both the blood and her broken hand. "Ouch. That doesn't look good."  
"It doesn't exactly feel that great either! It's bloody sore, I can tell you that!"  
"Keep your knickers on, we both know you've survived worse. Look, I'll phone Q. He can take you to A&E to get that sorted out, and I'll take this back to base." Bond gestured at Lila.  
"Right, just don't do anything to her that I wouldn't do to you, and try to restrain yourself from killing her please. We need her for information."  
"Right, the only thing I can think of that you wouldn't do is shoot her yourself. That's pretty much it. Could I get Eve to do it?"  
"Do you have to keep digging that back up?"


	6. Falling To Pieces

"Christ, someone needs to move that vent!" M said, tripping as the heel of her shoe got caught in the ventilation grate on the floor for the six millionth time. She entered the MI6 interrogation room, and noticed that, like father, like daughter, Lila was slumped on a chair in the glass tube centering the room, the only difference being the fact that Lila was handcuffed; when her father had been held there, he had been free of bonds. M walked in, took up her position beside Bond and looked down the line of people standing (or sitting in Eve's case) beside her; James Bond (eyewitness), Eve Moneypenny (victim), Q (M actually didn't know what he was doing there) Gareth Mallory (again, M was totally clueless) Jessica Mathews (MI6's psychology expert) and Alistair Kendall (head of the Scotland Yard street crime unit.)  
Bond subtly turned his head towards M. "How's your arm?"  
Thanks to the previous day's events, M's left arm was both plastered and in a sling. "Better than it was yesterday." She shrugged."Not so much sore as downright annoying now. I'm left handed, you see."  
"Right, could we get on with this?" Bond said. "I really need the loo."  
"That's nice to know," M rolled her eyes and walked forwards to where Lila was being held. "Lila?" She said firmly, with her usual air of authority. "Lila, don't speak unless I say otherwise. Just listen. You know fine well why you're here. There is an eyewitness, two of your victims, and I must point out now that I am one of them, a psychologist and a police officer here, we have all seen footage of your assaults on CCTV and this conversation is being recorded, so anything you say can be held against you in court. Now, as much as I'd like to do that, it is against our rules to torture you, but I will take this opportunity to say that 007 back here has a licence to kill. So you tell us what we want to here, and don't do anything stupid, you hear?"  
Lila nodded and groaned, leaning her head back. M continued. "Right, you may speak, but only once I'm finished asking the question. My first point of information is what made you feel the need to attack Eve and I, not to mention murder another two MI6 officials?"  
"Revenge," Lila said through gritted teeth. "You kill my father; I kill every one of you I can get my hands on until you're all dead or until I get caught, whichever happens sooner."  
"Right, fair enough. But it was Bond and I who killed your father, and he had caused the deaths of twelve of our agents, why not just go straight for us?"  
"I answer your question with a question of my own. Why did he kill those people if it was only you that he wanted to kill? Because it creates the sane effect that killing him had on me. You want revenge. You want to do to him what he did to them. And that makes it all the easier to get to your target. It drives them into the open. They can be looking for you whilst you conceal yourself in the obvious place nobody would think to look. You can, as you Brits say, 'catch them with their trousers down'."  
"Right-"  
"M, really, can I go now? I'm gonna piss myself in a minute?"  
"Since when were you such a whiny shit? Look, due to Bond's pathetic lack of bladder control, Lila, we're going to have to leave for now as he's our main source of security; he's the only one who can kill you should that be necessary. Stay. Put. There."  
And with that, most of the interrogation team turned and walked out...


	7. Gangnam Style

"Oh god, not again!" Q frowned, glaring at his computer screen.  
"Don't tell me. Lila's escaped and she's somehow gotten into the tube network? I swear, if I find out that she's got a twin sister or something, I'll shoot myself!" M said, sitting sub-consciously picking at her nails, not bothering to look up. Eve was beside Q. "Sewer system, actually." she corrected. "Christ, this girl knows what she's doing!"  
"Looks like daddy left behind an instruction sheet or something," Q said, staring at the steadily moving red dot on his laptop screen, marked 'SILVA, LILA'. "This is almost exactly how it happened with Silva. Oh, wait, he hacked my- holy _shit _how did she **_DO_**that?!" Q shook his laptop frantically as the picture fazed out into a network of weird red squiggles. "WHY did she do that? Last time, there was sort of a point. Now, I think she's doing it just to annoy us."  
"You're probably right," M groaned, standing up and staring at the screen. "But you'd better be able to fix this one; you're costing this organisation a fortune in computers."  
"I'm trying!" Q moaned impatiently, shaking the computer and pressing random buttons.  
"Turn it off and then back on again?" Eve suggested tentatively.  
''This isn't just the internet crashing, it's a bloody full-scale hack! You suggested that the last time!"  
"Pregnancy brain," Eve shrugged.  
"Come off it, you're not even four months in." Q said, pulling the plug out of his computer frantically. "Wait, I've used this virus when I hacked Mallory's- never mind. All it does is play Gangnam Style over and over again until you wipe the hard drive. Looks like she only knows the basics."  
"Still, this had better not be a complete repeat of the last time. The last thing I need right now is Skyfall part two."  
"Wait, on the subject, if Bond's still on the toilet, we're here and Alistair left, then where are Mallory and Jessica?" Eve said.  
"Oh, Christ!" And with that, M ran back to the interrogation room.

* * *

"Oh no...Oh Jesus, no, no, no!" M almost fell backwards when she saw what lay before her. She had never wanted to see it, and would never forget it no matter what she did. They were lain in a pool of their own blood. Mallory and Jessica. Mallory's throat was slit. Jessica still had a knife in her chest. Both were dead...


	8. Another Way To Die

**Okay, although I am a self-confessed Mallory hater, the last bit was a critical part of the storyline, nothing more and I swear to GOD that it wasn't personal in any way. Just thought I should make that clear.**

* * *

M thought she was going to pass out. What she was looking at would have been bad enough if she hadn't known the people lying dead before her, but they were both people she knew; Jessica was actually her friend/head mission controller, Leona's _daughter. _And as much as she hated Mallory, the arrogant control freak and all-round pain in the arse he was, she had never wanted him to die because the daughter of the man who had tried to kill her less than six months ago had sworn revenge on her. Tears slipped down her face, when she heard footsteps behind her.  
"Isn't it amazing what you can achieve by tearing out your tracker, flushing it down the toilet and hiding a BlackBerry down your cleavage?" M heard Lila's soft European tones behind her, and then felt hands on her shoulders. "You're in an incredibly awkward position, M. Four ways to run; each as unhelpful as the other. You could kill me; both morally wrong and cruel on your part. You could let me kill you; stupid and it would be giving me exactly what I want. You could use your well-practiced art of running and hiding; total cowardice. Or you could go running for the help that's still alive; but all they are are a nerd, a pregnant retard and your 'top agent' who looks to me as if he doesn't know his ass from his elbow. And I don't suppose the broken arm helps you in any scenario."  
"Lila, I have no idea what you are trying to achieve, but it won't work regardless."  
"Really, M, really? Do you know my father's story about the rats?"  
M was breathing shallowly, half-expecting Lila to point a gun at her head, break her neck or something along those lines. She slowly shook her head.  
"Well, I don't remember it in full, but the long and short of it is; if you leave a bunch of rats in a barrel with no food and no water for several days, then they will start to eat each other until only two remain. Then you let them free. But they don't just go back to eating their usual food. Now they only eat rat. You have changed their nature. Now that is a kill or be killed situation. A sort of Hunger Games if you like. And that is exactly what we find ourselves as. The last two rats. That was the situation with my father and Bond. Now it is you and me. But, there is one crucial difference this time. I know what I'm doing. I am determined to be the victor. I have a plan, and now it's time to put it into action. And that is what I'm going to need this for." Lila started grabbing at the back of her shirt. M contemptuously raised an eyebrow. "Charming."  
"You know, M," Lila said. "Underwear is an incredibly useful place for concealing things you don't want seen. Ah, this is what I'm looking for." Lila forced something into M's hand. M eyed the small white plastic capsule resting in her palm suspiciously. "What the hell is that?"  
"Hydrogen cyanide," Lila drew out every syllable of both words, seemingly relishing it.  
'Oh god, no. Look, Lila I am no more happy than you are about killing your father. I am no great lover of modern music, but to quote Lana Del Ray, there's no remedy for memory, his face is like a melody, it won't leave my head. I think about it my almost every waking hour. But I had a decision to make. Another quote, this time from Star Wars. In the words of fictional character Rio Chuchi: to die for one's cause is a great sacrifice; to live for one's cause is an even greater sacrifice. And I chose to live for my cause. And your father dying was, let's say, a bi-product of that decision."  
"Whether you're happy about what you did, he's still dead and I still want to avenge him. Now I'm not one to leave a job half-finished. If I decide that I want revenge; revenge is what I get, whatever the cost may be, whoever has to die for me to get there. I'm going to leave you with the choice you left him. When I hacked the computer, I removed your file from the system and used the Gangnam Style virus to cover my tracks. They don't know where you are. There's nowhere to run. You're going to die, but how? Well, that choice is yours. Slowly and painfully from dehydration or quickly, with the poison? But, and it's a big but, there is a possibility that the poison won't work. In fact, it probably won't. But it will hurt. You know," Lila flashed an evil smile that in M's opinion had far too many teeth in it. "It can change you..."And with that, Lila sprinted off in the opposite direction and swiftly ducked through a hole in the wall.

"Oh, crap," M muttered.


	9. Mr Know-It-All

**God, I feel like I've neglected this story big-time. Here's the next chapter. BTW I promise that no more of the ORIGINAL 007 characters will die in later chapters. I'm not going to attempt to make the same promise regarding my OCs. But if you were hoping that I'm going to kill Lila now I won't, and I don't plan to because without her there wouldn't be a story and I'm quite enjoying writing this. When I'm doen I might write a sequel, I don't know. Oh, and I solemnly swear that neither M or Eve will suffer any further - and the purpose of this fic is an alternative ending to Skyfall in which M DOESN'T die, so she will ****not**** be taking that cyanide, sahall I point out now. That is if it actually IS cyanide... And I won't do anything to Eve either. Something happens to Q in this chapter, but that was a result of his own stupidity.**

* * *

"Could someone please explain to me what the hell happpened to M?" Q - minus glasses - said to no-one in particular, holding his laptop out at arm's length and squinting at it long-sightedly, trying to make some kind of sense of the picture on screen. The only conclusion he had come to regarding the Britain-shaped fuzz, dotted with the locations of everyone in MI6, was that M wasn't on it. Either she had been wiped off the computer or had somehow gotten outside of the UK in the space of about three quarters of an hour from the interrogation room. Working out what the hell was going on would have been made a whole lot easier had he had his glasses in one peice. God he really needed to sto leaving them places where he - well, last time it had been Mallory but it was _generally _Q himself - was likely to sit.

He didn't have any idea where Eve had dissappeared to, and for all he knew, Bond was either still on the toilet or had been abducted by aliens. Q secretly hoped that it was number two, but knowing Bond, he had probably gotten fed up of the whole Lila fiasco and ws currently wherever there was Scotch.

"What was that?" Bond came up behind Q, a couple of sheets of toilet roll stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Q decided no to tell him about this. When Bond noticed Q's lack of eyewear, he couldn't resist having a dig at the twenty-six year old. "Sat on your glasses again, have you, Q?"  
"It's not funny!" Q growled through his teeth. "James, you try having bits of glass and metal stuck in your arse. Then we'll talk. You certainly took your time."  
"Couldn't find the bog roll," Bond muttered. "Really, you _need _to invest in contacts. What were you saying?"  
Q snorted. "You've certainly got enough of it stuck to your foot."  
"Hey! I'm being serious here, what's going on and where's M and or Lila?"  
"Lila- haven't the foggiest. She was down the sewers a minute ago, but she's totally off the radar now. M - pretty similar. She went to the interrogation room again when it occurred to her that Lila had probably killed mallory. Somebody'd better tell me where she is if she did though. I want to send her flowers."  
"You really hate Mallory, don't you?"  
"With a passion," Q said. "Oh come ON, _load_ for god's sake! What's going on with this computer?"  
"Well it has been hacked twice in the space of about an hour. Give it here, I can actually see unlike some idiots."  
Bond snatched the computer before Q could open his mouth to retort and opened up the staff database. "If M's file is still here it should be between Mallory's and Eve's - I've nosed at it enough. If she's been erased from the system then it shut down her GPS tracker so we won't be able to find her." Bond scrolled down, but there was just an empty space between 'MALLORY, GARETH LOUIS' and 'MONEYPENNY, EVE SASHA' instead of the file that used to be simply marked 'M'. "Okay, I need to see where Lila's is. How do you get into the files for people that don't work here." Q took the computer back, clicked around blindly for a bit, until he found Lila's file above her father's and underneath that of the guy who came in to unblock the gents' loos the previous week. It was standard policy for tabs to be kept on everyone who came in and out of the MI6 building, as anyone who saw the faces of active agents and/or found out their names had to be sworn to secrecy. Bond opened it up, read through all the stuff, was surprised to find that Lila's D.O.B was the exact same as M's and then noticed that the GPS box read 'tracker not detected'. "Okay, so looks like Lila's GPS stuff is down the pan - probably literally, since trackers break if they get waterlogged and can you really see Lila trekking about in the sewer? Wait, brainwave. Get me back onto the staff database."  
Q did as he was told, and Bond quickly got to the file marked 'BONHAM-CARTER, EVELYN JUDITH MARRION'. "Who's that?" Q looked baffled.  
"It's M's real name. I hacked in here to have a nose at what she'd put in my dossier, and I looked at that. I knew it was her; I actually saved her arse when she had that name, so I wanted to see what she was like when she was an agent."  
"Hey, what did she look like?"  
"Maralyn Munroe's face sellotaped onto Vesper's body is pretty much the long and short of it. Here, if I reactivate her old tracker, we can trace her provided she hasn't done what I did with one of my my old ones and cut it out."  
"What?"  
"Well, she's had to write and delete my file I-don't-know-how-many times beacuse I've apparently died twice and avoided being fired by the skin of my teeth, so each time they had to reimplant the tracking chip. I wan't mentally keen on the idea of having a load of mini-computers inside me, so got rid of the ones I didn't need. A bit like the cyanide. Threw that out years ago. Don't tell M about that, by the way." Bond had clicked on the reactivate button, then renamed the file 'M' whilst he and Q had been talking, and the GPS came up again. "Here she is."  
"How could I have been so stupid?" Q said. "I mean, I invented the Gangnam Style virus for Mallory's computer, but remembered that it could be used to cover up bigger stuff."  
"I don't know, but you seem pretty stupid to me all the time."  
"Hey!"

* * *

"You took your time!" M remarked. She had been sitting and having a mental debate with herself on whether or not she should just take the poison and get it over and done with; she was really sick to the back teeth of the whole Lila fiasco. Then it occurred to her that Lila had said the capsule probably wouldn't work. Knowin gher, it probably wasn't even cyanide, just something like drain cleaner or toilet bleach that would make M suffer but not kill her - well, straight away, anyway. Internal damage might do that, so M had decided that she wasn't going to take her chances.  
"You're welcome, considering the fact I've just saved your arse for the second time this month."  
"How the hell did you find me this time? Lila said what she'd done before she escaped through that hole in the wall."  
"Let's jus say thank god the last M didn't understand the meaning of the phrase 'pendrive dump' and leave it at that." Q sighed.  
"Right. What happened to your-"  
M noticed the hostile not in Q's voice at roughly the same time as his missing glasses. "Don't. Comment."


	10. No Remedy For Memory

**OMG chapter 10 already! Now the second longest fic I have ever written and I intend to go on for a lot longer! Thanks sooo much to RebaForever15, LilyLunaPotter142 and TemporaMores for their support with this. It's great to know that there's other people who like what I write! And a shout out to Suicidebycyanide. Why the hell did I not think of that name? Now I think it's high time we had a chapter from Lila's POV!**

* * *

Lila was back exactly where she started. On the streets, no idea where she was going, when she was going to get there or what she was going to do when she did. All she had with her was her BlackBerry, the small hand gun she had had down the waistband of her knickers the entire time, a few credit cards and about £100 cash. God, that Bond character was criminally easy to steal from. Of all of it, the phone, which by now had some of the casing coming off and a big crack down the screen, was the last thing she wanted to loose. Her father had taught her all the tricks of the trade; she could use it to hack into computers, detonate explosives, disable power connections and internet and a whole lot more. But then again, the gun had the most personal value to her. it was the last remaining one of her father's possesions that she actually had, and it was the last part of him that she had. Okay, there were only three bullets left in it, and it was covered in old congealed blood, but it was _his _blood...

_"Lila..." She had been hiding in the shadows of the old chapel, and watched with horror as Bond had plunged the knife into her father's back and then left him for dead when he realized that M would probably die herself if he didn't do something. Her father had left her o the island alone, but she had been tracing him, watching BBC coverage of what he had been getting up to, then gotten herself to Scotland as soon as she found out what he was doing. She had fought the entire battle at Skyfall along with her father and his men. She had been the one that shot M. And she was the one that had her father's dying figure in her arms now. By some complete fluke, M had managed to shoot Lila herself in the top of her arm, it was gushing blood and she could barely move her arm, but she couldn't care less. The glow from the still smouldering remains of Skyfall, thenoise of the rain hitting the roof of the chapel, none of it mattered to Lila anymore. For all she cared, she was in an enormous blank space with just her and her father, whom she knew was barely minutes from death, and absolutely nothing else. God, why the hell did it always have to rain when something like this happen? It always did in films, and just that morning, Lila had been thinking that her life would make a pretty good movie. She bloody hated irony. _

_Her father's hand lightly brushed her cheek. "What are you doing here?" Then he noticed the blood on her arm. "Wha..you're hurt. Who did this to you?"  
"I was worried about you. And it doesn't hurt, I'm fine. I think it was M, I'm not completely sure."  
"That bitch. Lila, I..." Her father's voice was cutting off at various points constantly. His breath was forced, and his entire body was shaking. There was a faint ghost of a smile on his face, but it faded when he saw the tears clouding Lila's eyes. "I'm okay, don't worry. Lila, I - I'm so sorry. I had the choice of being a good father or a revenged-crazed lunatic and I chose the second one. I-I love you..." Raoul loved his daughter with all that remained of his heart. He could recognise the sound of her laugh, her scream, the sweet melody of her voice from a million miles away. She was all that kept him in what little sanity he had left. She was literally all that he cared about. The only reason that he had never just let Bond kill him, the reason that he was trying with all his might to cling to life by his fingernails was for her sake. He hadn't wanted it to end. Not now, anyway. But it was. _

_Lila felt him go limp in her arms. She buried her face in his hair and cried; "Please wake up..." But though she was trying desperatley to convince herself otherwise, though she was willing him to open his eyes or start breathing again, she knew deep down that he would never wake again..._

Lila was full aware that when her father lost all signs of life, she lost all signs of sanity. Lust for revenge came on in sudden bouts, which were then overrun by guilt. She had been the one that blew up MI6, not her father, though he had been teaching her at the time, but she hadn't personally seen those eight die in front of her. The fact that by now she was a murderer twelve times over made her feel a bit sick, but she had a plan now. Thinking of what both M and Bond had done to her and her father had given her a fresh burst of courage, and she planned to hit them, well M at the very least, where it would hurt most. She didn't like the idea. But she knew exactly what she had to do...


	11. Impossible

If there were two things that annoyed the crap out of M, then they were Bond's habit of inviting himself into her apartment whenever he felt like it and phones ringing first thing in the morning. November had slowly bled into December, and before M knew what the hell was happening, she had lost all leads on Lila and it was Christmas Eve. And what better way to wake up the day before M's least favorite day of the year than to the slightly irritating piano riff coming out of M's iPhone, letting her know that her daughter, Summer, was phoning her? Well, as M picked up the phone in a sleepy haze, still in the process of waking up, her black silk pajama bottoms halfway down her arse and her hair sticking out in all directions, she could think of at least twelve off the top of her head. "Summer, have you seen the time? What are you playing at?" M's voice was little more than a half-asleep groan as she held herself up on her elbow and mentally fought the desire just to hang up and go back to sleep.  
"M - Mum, whatever you want to be called right now, complete and utter dire emergency," Summer, who, as you have probably worked out due to her accidentally referring to her mother as M, was an MI6 agent, sounded panicky, her voice husky as if she had recently been crying.  
"Okay, I'm listening. What happened?"  
"Lila..." Summer's voice tailed off as M heard her eldest daughter break down in tears.  
"Summer, get a grip! What the hell is going on?"  
"Well, Lila, she...she got June and Hope and..."  
"What?"  
"June and Hope, your two daughters that aren't me. I mean, I never knew that Lila had a gun and it was just a complete coincidence that June got shot in the exact same place as you...She's in surgery right now; me and Q - David, sorry, force of habit, are both at the hospital. Hope got shot too, but..."  
"Summer! Summer, calm down, where is she?" M was up now, yanking on the first skirt and shoes she could find, not bothering to change out of the black pajama top she was wearing. Summer pretty much kept herself to herself emotionally; her crying only ever happened once in a blue moon, so it really had to be bad for her to be getting so worked up. As for Q - or to call him by his real name, her son David - it was a little known secret among MI6 that they were related, and she intended to keep it that way, so if Summer had gone and told everyone, then she was in deep shit. Summer for now had seemingly recovered more-or-less from her most recent bout of sobbing, and M heard her say with some difficulty as she left her bedroom and made her way out of her apartment; "Mum...Hope...Hope's dead..."

* * *

**see, I told you that not killing any of my OCs is a promise that I can't keep. Sorry about the cliffhanger, but people have been reviewing and saying that they are worried for Bond's sake so I thought I should get that weight off of the shoulders of any of you Bond-shippers out there. And someone has already put Q as M's son, so I mean no offence to the author of SKYFALL Redone, I just thought that that was probably true, so decided to stick it in here. Sorry this is so short btw, I just didn't think that I could make a short but incredibly tragic phone conversation any longer, and thought this would be a good place to stop.**


	12. Happy Christmas Your Arse

"You look happy."  
M rolled her eyes, Bond's voice snapping her out of the thought that she was getting too old to be spending her life sprawled across a desk trying to stop the world from getting blown sky-high by lunatics like Silva and Lila. Lila, who had murdered M's youngest daughter in cold blood just that morning. Crying was possibly the most out-of-character thing M could do, but tears came to her eyes whenever anyone said the word 'hope'. She was maybe a bit annoyed with herself for getting maybe a little more pissed than she had any right to be with Tanner earlier, but she was completely shattered and near breaking point due to Hope's death and the fact that both 008 (Summer) and Q were both at the hospital with June. She really should have been as well, but she really couldn't face it...  
"Bond, does the phrase 'personal space' have any kind of meaning in your head? I mean, first my home and now my office, you are really getting past the limit. Hey, why on earth did Heather let you through anyway?" Heather, Eve's temporary replacement, was nice enough, M had to say in the girl's defece, but she was a complete pushover.  
"To be honest with you, I think she fancies me. Who put a pole up your arse?"  
"Bond, if you don't mind, my daughter died earlier today and her older sister is in hospital, both courtesy of Lila, so I think I have a right to be maybe a little pissed off."  
"If that happened, how come you're still here? I mean, when something like that...Look, shouldn't you be on Bereavement leave?"  
"Bond, when you have a job like mine, then really the only things that can get you out of work are severe gunshot wounds, mild heart attacks, cancer and death. And if this is about that bloody Christmas party, then I said to Tanner to tell you lot that I'm not coming." Bond sat down in font of M's opaque glass desk, leaning back in his seat and eyeing the ceramic bulldog that sat by her side. "Honestly, how can you put up with that..._thing _there?"  
"Bond, you have your decorating tastes and I have mine, thank you very much," M said, raising an eyebrow. "Look, if you're not here for any reason other than to moan about my ornament choice and general mood, then can you please remove yourself from my line of vision?"  
"Look, I get why you're not coming tonight, but I was under the impression that you enjoyed that kind of thing."  
"Bond, I'm not that good an actress and you know it. Those parties annoy the crap out of me; you know that I think that the head of MI5, the prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are all idiots, so as you have found out on previous occasions, them, me and alcohol in the same room are never really a great mix. Really, there are several things I would rather do with my evenings than stand smiling, listening to a bunch of plonkers going on about how the government spends too much on the Secret Service when all we really do is run about with guns, trying to avoid punching said plonkers in the face and hoping that two hours is short enough to stop me from getting myself completely blotto and long enough for social etiquette to allow me to leave without people asking questions. You know the last time I spent the whole time walking around with a post-it note stuck to my arse saying 'Bah, Humbug'? In fact, I'm sure you do."  
Bond raised his hand gingerly and muttered; "Guilty! Okay then. Look, to save me the trouble of breaking- ahem, inviting myself into your apartment tomorrow night, I thought I'd give you this now."  
Bond flung a small envelope across the table and walked out. When M opened it and the little plastic card slipped out and onto her desk, it became apparent that Bond had overheard her and Tanner's conversation, which had sprung up out of sheer boredom, about the awful quality of shops like Primark. She had to admit, the twenty pound gift voucher for the very shop she had said that she hated a few days previously was a little more inventive than the bottle of Scotch that she usually got from 007, and she had to give him credit for his ingenuity, but he was still going to get a severe bollocking come December 27th, the next time M would see him.

M slumped across the cold glass of her desk. God, she hated Christmas...

* * *

**Okay, I wrote this a day before the end of the world - December 20th, 2012 (aarrgghh!), so if you're reading this in July 2014 or something, that's why it's so christmassy. I am running a little competition: all the chapter names for this story are song lyrics or titles - except for one! I wonder if you can guess which one it is...**


	13. What Doesn't Kill You

**Now my longest ever fic to date! Aaannndd...it's December 21st and the world hasn't ended...yet...**

* * *

M wasn't so much the Evil Queen of Numbers when it came to writing dossiers, but she was certinly the Queen of Procrastination. The three hours she was supposed to have spent writing Hope's dossier (Hope, Summer, June and David all worked for MI6. David was Q, as you know, Hope and Summer were agents and June was a secretary, so it was standard protocol for M to have to write up a report for any agent who died in any way, regardless of any family ties,) she had spent doing a number of useless tasks and losing herself in thought. She had gotten incredibly annoyed with Tanner - yet again. Flicked through a bunch of random printed sheets that had accumulated on her desk somehow. Opened, skim-read and closed a bunch of those stupid files that she didn't know where they came from on her computer documents. Watched a bunch of pointless crap on YouTube. Considered just shoving a pen up her nose and killing herself. Decided against it. Picked at her chipping nail varnish, which was an incredibly out-of-character shade of magenta - her seven-year-old granddaughter Anabel had insisted on doing her nails when she had come over on Christmas. Looked at the heavy downpour pelting at her window. Why the hell did it always have to bloody rain when she did these things? And found herself staring at the ceiling in a haze of sadness and that nagging feeling you get at the back of your mind when you're meant to be doing something, but are actually doing something else entirely, which is generally completely irrelevant. "Well, Lila," M muttered, folding her arms across her chest and looking at the long scar up her forearm where Lila had knifed her. "If what you're trying to do is break me, then you've gone and bloody well done it...''

* * *

M kicked off her shoes and threw herself down on the sofa in her living room. Handling her emotions and funerals were two things that she didn't deal with too well, so having to do both in the same day was really not something she would have chosen to do with herself. And the fact that it had been her daughter's funeral had just added insult to injury. She couldn't be arsed moving herself, and the stabs of phantom pain she got in her side from the wound she had received at Skyfall whenever she even faintly twitched anything on her bottom half made it far worse. She felt as if her life was over. Like Eve had said the night she had been stabbed, she felt as if she could never be happy again. M let her head sink to her knees and felt her entire body shudder with silent sobs. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she had had the ability to command death by simply snapping her fingers these past several years, but she had never felt so alone and powerless in her entire life...


	14. Good Intentions

To be perfectly honest, James had no idea where he was going, or how he had ended up where he was currently; a packed street just outside of the Bluewater shopping center. To be fair, the period around Christmas and New Year bored the shit out of him, and this time was probably the worst. No work, almost everywhere was shut, he didn't get long enough off to go on holiday anywhere - and he was by this point sick to death of flying, anyway -, he didn't have any family to spend it with and going to pester the grieving M would just be cruel even by his standards. Plus he wasn't too keen on the idea of getting the amount of shit from M that she was probably planning to give for the Primark voucher at this present moment in time. Normally what he found himself doing during his week off was getting some poor taxi driver to ferry him halfway around London until he - or she as it had been on one occasion - got pissed off and just dumped him somewhere random. Today had been no exception, and he was practically drowning in the sea of people he had found himself in.

He was in the process of moving through the crowd, his hands in his pockets to try and shield them from the cold December air, when a young woman of about twenty-something brushed past him, stared up into his face, her own partly covered with a dark purple scarf, and sprinted off in his opposite direction, her blonde hair flying out behind her, after seemingly drinking in his face with her dark, hawk-like eyes. It took a little longer than it would have to click the woman he had just seen to her name, but James managed within about a quarter of a minute to recognize whoever-it-was. He swiftly turned round and broke into a run, following the young woman. Albeit, now she was wearing something different, compared to the last time he had seen her, and she looked as if she had washed her hair recently, but that face; those eyes were near impossible not to remember. As he followed her somewhat haphazard progress, though perhaps a little faster, as the woman he was chasing was wearing four-inch stilettos, he muttered under his breath. "Lila..."

* * *

M had woken up in all sorts of awkward places and all-round strange situations over the years, but this was possibly the most unpleasant, both the physical feeling and the sadness clogging her head and refusing to leave any space for slightly more important things like thoughts and making the connections between brain and muscles to make herself move. She didn't exactly have a clear recollection of what she had been doing or how she fell asleep in the first place, but the smashed remains of a mug on the floor and the stone cold Earl Grey that was all over her, the white leather sofa (who's brilliant idea was it to make a sofa that was near impossible to keep clean, anyway?) and the polished wood of her living room floor gave her a bit of a hint. She was in that kind of tired, dreamlike, almost hung over state that you get in when you stay up until god knows what time and then unconsciously fall asleep and her thoughts were all over the place. Until, that is, she heard her phone ringing...

* * *

James heard the disgusting yet satisfying crunch of his smaller and considerably younger opponent's nose smashing off the pavement as she clawed at his hand and tried to get her gun off of him. James himself was none the worse for ware; Lila had been underneath him for most of the time they had been...fighting? No, that was too childish. Well, both had been aiming to inflict some kind of considerable damage on the other, so it could qualify as a fight. Okay, he didn't know what you might call it, but he certainly had the upper hand over Lila. Height difference, plus the fact that he was stronger, heavier and more experienced when it came to that kind of thing made overpowering the (potentially even more psychopathic ) daughter of a psychopath something he could do in his sleep.

Lila found James's (or any man's) weakness,and once again jammed the heel of her shoe into it. James doubled over; really, that was the one design flaw of the male human, as Lila stood up, blood running down her pale, heart-shaped face from both her nose and the gash down her cheek caused by a chunk of broken glass James had used as a weapon before he had the gun as leverage against her. She carelessly wiped it off with the back of her hand, and growled through her teeth; "Bond, this isn't your fight. Now hand that over, or you're going to get damaged, mark my words."  
"If your idea of damage is just kicking me in the balls again, fire away," Bond said, casually holding the gun by his side. "I've survived worse, we both know that. The costume change doesn't fool anyone, Lila. And you really think that I'll just give you this back so you can go and kill someone else? Yeah, I know about that." Lila crouched over, seemingly readying herself to fly at him. James pulled the trigger and fired a warning shot at the ground.

He heard the bullet bounce up off the pavement, then the short, sharp scream that erupted from Lila as the lead shot hit her thigh and she fell completely arse over tit, landing awkwardly with her ankle folded underneath her. She was completely out cold again, but this time looked scarily dead. "Aw, shit!" Bond muttered, pulling his phone out. "Shit, shit, shit _shit!" _

* * *

M picked up the phone, though she considered leaving it to ring off as soon as she saw Bond's number flash up on the display. "Hello?"  
"M, help. I'm not sure, but I think I've just screwed up big-style."


	15. Gives You Hell

**Okay, I had this really weird dream last night which I thought I should tell you about:  
I was in a the back seat of a Fiat 500 in Toronto with James Bond and this girl from my school called Jennifer, when everything went white and we were all just standing in this big blank space. Then M, Q, Severine, Silva, Vesper and Lila just appeared out of nowhere, all wearing black bras and knickers, fishnet tights and stiletto heels - yes, even Silva and Q. Trust me, you don't get funnier than cross-dressing psychopaths and insanely cute nerds. One of those moments I wish that I could take photos of my dreams - and they all started doing the Cell Block Tango from Chicago. Then all the characters that have died came and killed me and Bond in the way that they died - Silva stabbed us in the back, Severine shot us in the head and so on - and then I woke up crying and I don't know why. **

**PS. This chapter is dedicated to any other die-hard M fans like myself, RebaForever15 and TemporaMores. Merry Christmas, **

* * *

"You IDIOT!" M banged her fist against her desk as she stood up, making the whole thing shake. "You do realize that what you've done isn't going to help anyone in the slightest?." She glared down at Bond, who was sat in front of her desk, not looking as if he cared in the slightest.  
"What, if I killed her, then isn't that stopping anyone else from getting killed buy her? Hey, doesn't it kind of avenge Hope as well?"  
"But that's the problem! You haven't killed her! I've spent the past two hours watching CCTV footage from all over London, and I've definitely seen her at least six times! All that's going to do is get her madder than she was before, considering the fact that you shot her in the leg, broke her nose and put that massive gash in her face."  
"Well, I'm allowed to do that! Still, remember point number two? Revenge?"  
M rolled her eyes and sat down again. Her voice was much quieter now. "Bond, revenge doesn't get anyone anywhere. Look at Silva, look at Lila. Now, I apologize if I am reminiscing a bit here, but if I had chosen to get revenge on everyone who did me a wrong when I was an agent, then there wouldn't be a single terrorist, pedophile or mass murderer left on this planet. I've been in amongst almost everyone; the Mafia, Al Qaeda, Vortex; the worst was probably this French gang called Deja Vu who you probably haven't heard of, but unlike you I did what had to be done, and if I was injured in the process, which I was on several occasions, then so be it. Revenge is just a pointless waste of time; cold-blooded killing in order to get back at someone for something that is usually quite petty. And can I remind you that a 00 status is a licence to _kill: _maiming or seriously injuring has nothing to do with it. And I gave you that status, bare in mind I can take it away just as easily."

Bond rolled his eyes, still acting as if he didn't give a damn. He genuinely didn't, actually. Though M had barely stopped to draw breath for the past five minutes, she was wasting her time and energy. Letting M's rants simply wash over him had become a second nature over the years.  
"Bond? Are you even listening?"  
"Serious question?"  
"Well, I though I aught to say now that I'm turning this whole thing into an official mission. But, if all goes to plan, you get nothing to do with it."  
"Why are you telling me this?"  
"Well, you're my plan B. I'm sending 008. She has a licence to kill as well, but she's less likely to try and screw her target."  
"When have I been known to do that?"  
"Vesper. Severine. Need I go on?"  
"What makes you think I'd want to do that to Lila?"  
"Well, she's alive and of the opposite sex, I wouldn't put it past you." M pointed out blatantly. Perhaps a little uncalled for, but she did have a point. "You can go."

* * *

'MISSION BRIEFING FOR AGENT 008, SUMMER BONHAM-CARTER. THIS DOCUMENT IS FITTED WITH AN ELECTRONIC TAGGING DEVICE. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REMOVE FROM M'S OFFICE. DO NOT COPY OR TAKE NOTES.' Summer scowled as she read the writing at the top of the file M - or her mum - had just handed to her.  
"It's just standard procedure to give you these, but I think you know all there is to know already."  
"This is about Lila, isn't it?"  
M nodded slowly. "Summer, do I need to remind you that you have the right to withdraw from, abort or turn down the mission at any point you choose? You say the word and I pull you out, it's that simple."  
"I know, but you really want to send me on this after what happened to Hope and June? I'm not doing it." Summer slid the briefing across the table so hard that it completely slid off the edge and landed conveniently in the wastepaper basket.  
"Summer, you know that I wouldn't let her-"  
"If I don't think you have the balls to send a man - or in my case, woman - out to die, then I'm wrong. You said it yourself." She stood up and turned to walk out, tossing her blonde hair off of her shoulder as she went.  
"Summer, don't have a strop. It doesn't suit you. Look, I wouldn't send you out on this mission if I knew you were going to be killed. You know I wouldn't. Just-"  
Summer didn't turn round, but before she opened the door to leave, she muttered loud enough for M to hear; "You know the day you became head of MI6 was the I lost my mother."


	16. All Is Done, There Is Nothing to Say

Lila stared at her reflection in the filthy mirror of the somewhat disgusting public toilet she had dragged herself into. On waking up, she had decided that the flesh wound in her leg wasn't that bad, and she had gotten used to trying to tolerate the pain; now it was almost bearable. She had more-or-less gotten her nose back in the position that it was supposed to be in, but had decided that a mirror would be helpful when it came to cleaning up the gash in her cheek. She wet a sheet of toilet roll in the sink, and then wiped it across her face, wincing as the water got into her cut. Urgh, James bloody Bond. Honestly, he was a complete jinx when it came to her family. First her father, now this...

To start with, what Lila had been doing was strictly finishing what her father had started, and maybe getting her own revenge for his death whilst she was at it, yet now it was personal as well. She was going to kill James Bond and M for what they did to her and her father if it was the last thing she did.

She stared hard at her reflection again. She had changed, that she had known for a while, but exactly how much surprised her. She had to admit; now she looked more like him than she ever had, though some of that was from personal choice, not inherited genes. Her blonde hair was a hopelessly tangled mess; it had been tied in a ponytail at the nape of her neck the last time she had checked, though now she couldn't find the elastic band she'd tied it with amid her matted platinum blonde frizz. There was still a little blood on her face, but, like the pain of her shot wound, she was getting used to ignoring it by now. It seemed to her now that she had inherited a few of her father's quirks when it came to dress sense, she noticed, staring at the fawn material of her jacket. She looked hard at her face. At the same fear in her own eyes that had been in those of the girl that she had murdered about a week ago...

Lila didn't know who she was any more. All of her security had gone, any kind of feelings of safety had slipped and passed her by – not like she actually was safe anywhere – and she had forgotten what it felt like to not constantly be wondering how she was going to be able to evade being caught for her last murder. And there was the fact that she had lost count of the number of innocent lives she had ended without batting an eyelash. Oh, god, human feelings were kicking in again. And this time worse than ever. The knowledge of what she had become was clinging to her like a disease; she couldn't forget about it, there was no release, not even whilst she was sleeping. It was like there was blood on her hands and she couldn't get it off, no matter what she tried.

She choked, sprinted towards an open toilet cubicle and narrowly avoided throwing up all down herself. She kicked the door shut and bolted it, before allowing herself to sink to her knees and lose herself in a fit of sobbing, the bitter erosive feeling of vomit still lacing her mouth and her head hurting to point of near physical explosion due to the fact she was so overcome with emotion. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt like this since the death of her father.

"Are you all right?" She looked up; tear tracks streaming down her face and her eyes red. There was someone banging on the door on the other side. '_Damn you,' _Lila groaned before she got herself together a little and muttered through her teeth; "Lo siento, no hablo Inglés..." (in other words, 'Sorry, I don't speak English' but in Spanish. Having a different mother tongue to the language you generally used could be pretty useful sometimes.) The woman on the other side of the door took this with little question, and said quietly; "Well, if you're sure...

After a little digging around in her pockets, Lila found her battered phone, now missing most of the back shell, a chunk of the screen, the 'G', 'Q', 'P', 'S', '1', '9' and '' keys and the space bar. it took her a few minutes to hack into the personal email account of the inventor of and one of the only other six except her who knew how to use and get through her personal favourite virus program (whose firewalls regarding personal information ironically weren't that good) and she began typing in a quick message before cut and pasting her FaceBook profile picture onto the end and hitting the 'Send' button. This was it. She had had it...


	17. Trouble

**Can anyone can spot the fanart-based thingy in this?**

* * *

M stared at the memorial wall just outside MI6. She had shouldered past Tanner and a rather agitated-looking Q on her way out about five minutes after Summer had left her office. The last words that her eldest daughter had said to her were ringing around her head ('the day you became head of MI6, I lost my mother') along with the sheer thoughtlessness that she had retaliated with ('Summer, how would you feel if you or I were to die tonight and that was the last thing you said to me?) There were tears obscuring M's vision as she thought about the stupid argument between her and her daughter that seemed to have proven fatal for both the mission to try and track down Lila and the relationship between her and Summer. Through her tears, M could sort of make out the blank space on the white marble where the name and date; _'Tiago Rodriguez, 1968-1999' _had used to be before she had it scrubbed off, and the five most recent names on the thing;

_Pamela Thornton, 1970-2012_

_Johnny English, 1973-2012_

_Gareth Mallory, 1966-2012_

_Jessica Mathews, 1982-2012_

_Hope Bonham-Carter, 1979-2012_

She remembered that point at Skyfall where she had thought that others would be looking upon her name – not that they would actually know who the name belonged to, due to the fact that she was known to everyone as either M or ma'am – the same way she was looking at the memorial now. She would have been happier with that if it meant that the most recent five names would never have met with their final tragic fates. Urgh, if she hadn't been the headstrong bugger that she was and refused to die when her time had come, then none of this would have happened. M sighed and continued walking. This was her fault. If it wasn't for her, then none of this would've happened in the first place. All in all, she felt, quite frankly, like shit...

* * *

"We should get a cat," Q muttered absetly to Eve, who was beside him, picking at her nails. Q was in the process of trying to set up a stronger firewall for his personal email. Why the hell had someone, presumably Lila, hacked it yet again?  
"Don't be stupid," Eve muttered, digging at an annoying chip of purple nail varnish that was refusing to go anywhere with her thumbnail. "You'd blow it up."  
Q thought for a while, staring frustratedly at his computer, the virus program he had spent an hour downloading still refusing to work. "...Not intentionally."  
"Yeah, it would be a result of a freak accident or something," Eve agreed with a note of sarcasm in her voice. "But it would still happen. And that, David, is why we do not have a cat. Hey, you've got an email."  
"I know," Q muttered again, cancelling the download on his laptop and clicking the 'YOU'VE GOT MAIL' icon. "What time is it, anyway?"  
"Midnight," Eve said, leaning up and looking at the email Q had just opened up. "Still, there's no such thing as overtime when you work here, otherwise we'd all be bloody millionaires."  
"Yeah, the thought had occured to me- oi, it's called 'personal email' for a reason!" Q noticed Eve reading what she could see from her eye level.

The email actually read;

_(sorry about this, Q, I couldn't get into M's email) M, or whatever your name actually is,_

_My name is Zurine Martinique Rodriguez, though you probably know me as something else. First of all, I'm sorry. I know I've been an idiot, we can talk about that at a later date. Second of all, the only reason what I did was because people working under you are actually working under me. That's how I managed to get through security, trace agents and crap like that. The first one was Gareth Mallory, though I had to kill him because he double-crossed and threatened to give me up. I will tell you who the second is, but only if you find me..._

_Love from, _

_Lila xxx_

Q skim-read this, muttering a few key words under his breath. "M...Zurine Martinique Rodriguez...sorry...been an idiot...under me... crap... Mallory... double-crossed...only if you find me - oh GOD!" Q hastily picked up his iPhone, and after trying to type in the code so frantically he ended up throwing it on the floor, he hit speed dial and called M, Eve still sitting looking clueless. The voice that was on the other end was far from what M usually sounded like; her tone was sad and disheartened, without her usual dry sarcasm. "Hello?"  
"M, massive problem. We've got a mole."


	18. I Think We've Got A Problem

"What the-" Q heard M almost literally scream on the other end of the phone as he frantically shook the computer around a little, then opened up every webpage he could find with information on Lila. "She's _one person! _How the bloody hell is that even possible?"  
"Well," Q said through gritted teeth, in the process of hacking an America's Most Wanted website. "Apparently they worked for Silva to start with. Mallory was one of them, but apparently he threatened to betray her, so she either killed him or had him killed."  
"Oh, _god!" _Q heard a door slam on M's end of the line. "And I was wondering what he was doing with his phone during the interrogation! God, how could we have been so _stupid_? I mean, when someone says they have people everywhere, it doesn't usually mean...Christ, _florists _use that expression, it doesn't mean they have someone in the bloody room! Hey, you only said who _one_ of them is, then who's the other?"  
"That's the problem," Q said, on the CNN webpage now. "She said in the email that we have to find her first if we want to know number two. Hey, did you know that Lila was on death row in the US?"  
"No. I mean, she was a ghost until I got hold of her previous criminal record. We have no idea where she's from, she's got no legal nationality, she's not registered anywhere, her age and mother are both just guesswork. Hell, the only reason we're worrying ourselves over this is some tragic and somewhat disgusting quirk of fate that resulted in her father surviving that cyanide. Wait, death row? That's news."  
"Well, apparently she is. Her and her father seemingly tested out a bit of their 'point and click' fiasco across the pond, 'cause they've both been wanted over there since Lila was sixteen for international security breach, terrorism and suspected murder. Wait," Q nearly had a panic attack when he saw mug shots of Lila that looked as if they had been taken about five years ago all over the CNN news page. "And, lo and behold, it looks as if they've gotten their hands on her somehow."  
"_What_?!"

"Well," Q muttered, skimming over the news article that he had clicked on. "It says here that she was seen on CCTV in a 'public restroom' about twenty minutes before being captured by a CIA operative who was on a mission here after the Yanks caught wind that she was at large here. God, it looks like they've hacked CCTV circuits here!"  
"See? I keep saying that there's a reason as to why our number one rule is 'don't trust anyone...especially if they're another country's secret service.' Jesus, I'm getting too bloody old for all of this..."

* * *

Just about a minute after she'd gotten out of the shower, M found herself having a shouted conversation with Q over the phone whilst trying to get dressed again. It had recently occurred to her that between insane hours and the fact that whenever something went wrong, everyone's solution was 'blame the person in charge' kind of made her position not a brilliant one to be in, and of late, this was just too true. Between the fallout with Summer earlier in the day and what was happening now, she really was not enjoying herself in the slightest at the moment.

In the car on the way back to MI6 (M already felt sorry for Tanner come tomorrow due to the fact that her chances of sleeping tonight were now dwindling in the single digits) M found herself on the phone yet again. She hadn't bothered checking the number that had flashed up on her phone's display screen, but almost instantly regretted it when she heard Summer's voice on the other end. "It's me, please don't hang up."  
"Oh, it's you."  
"Mum, please, just listen. I feel like a complete idiot, I am really sorry about what I said...well, it's yesterday now, but anyway. Look, I was a little worried after what happened to Hope and June, and I kind of let rip because...Look, I don't know why."  
"I don't blame you," M sighed. "Look, I should never have suggested that you go on that mission. I just thought...well, I could've sent any 00s, I just figured that after what Lila did, if it came to that, then you'd have no qualms about killing her. Come to think of it, since it's actually in Britain and our job is overseas stuff, then I really should have just left it to MI5, but then I suppose it's not really their fight..."  
"Mum, you're just rambling now. Look, are you still trying to pull that mission together? I considered it, and honestly I think that if you're still doing it, then I wouldn't mind being sent."  
"Well, that's the issue. I would, but I just got a call from Q. She had people working for her in amongst us, one's dead and she won't tell who the other is. But, and it's a big but, apparently some CIA agent got hold of her and she's on her way to Arizona Max. And, the big issue is she's been on death row there for the past eight years, so she doesn't have to stand trial for them to execute her. It's our problem now, so are you up for it?"  
"Okay, so just to be clear, I'm going to America to break her out of prison, then take her back here for questioning, then she's probably gonna be deported anyway?"  
"That's about it, yes," M said, pulling into a parking space a few blocks from MI6. She could tell by Summer's voice that she was smiling as she spoke.  
"When have I been known to turn down something like that?"


	19. The Worst Thing I Could Do

**This jumps around a bit, so I'll tell you whose POV each part is from now;  
1. M**  
**2. James**  
**3. James**  
**4. Q**  
**5. James**  
**6. M  
(I have no idea about Arizona's geography, so if the time bits fit better with Toronto or somewhere, it's because it's the only place even remotely close to the US that I've ever been. In case it's escaped your notice whilst/if you have read any of my other fics, I have a thing about Bugatti Veyrons)  
RebaForever15- You enjoyed it last time, and I found this on your profile. Let's play Spot the Scott & Bailey Reference!**

* * *

"Why the hell did you even let this _happen_?...I know she was wanted with you too, but she was on our territory so therefor was our problem...Oh, just shove it up your fat ar...Sorry, but...Okay, that was just uncalled for, you kiss your mother with that mouth?...Oh, sorry for your loss," Tanner watched as M slammed the phone down after an hour of yelling blue murder down the line to the head of the CIA. "Bloody Americans. Bollocks to the lot of them. Tanner, I think I'm going to have to send Summer on that mission. I really don't want to, but...Wait, do you think that there's anyone we can send with her?"

"Maybe Mr Bond, ma'am?" Tanner spoke tentatively; M always managed to work herself up into an absolute stinker of a mood whenever she had to spend any time around or talking to anyone with her kind of status in another country's secret service, Pegasus - the head of MI5 - and the Prime Minister. She gave him a look that plainly said 'are you completely out of your tiny mind?'. Though after a little consideration, she said quietly; "Fine."

* * *

_One week later, Phoenix, Arizona_

"What the hell is this?" James stared with a raised eyebrow at the expensive lump of Italian metal parked in front of him and his mission partner, Summer, or Mini-M as he had been calling her on the flight - though she was a good four inches taller than M's 5'1".  
"Bugatti Veyron," Summer flashed him a crimson-lipped smile as she flicked the keys with one perfectly manicured talon-like nail. "Bags I'm driving."  
"What happened to the bloody Aston?" James was scowling like a three-year-old who had been refused ice cream as he climbed into the passenger side, Summer starting the car. He had to admit, the thing was an absolute beast, but he was still disappointed at the thought that he should have his hands around the wheel of the beautiful machine that was an Aston Martin Vanquish right now.  
"I guess Q didn't trust you not to drive it off a cliff or something stupid like that."

* * *

"I never would have thought that M was stupid enough to send me, a womanizing assassin with a gaping hole for a heart, out into the field with her precious little girl." James was still in a foul mood, more with Q than anyone else for taking away his toys, and was maybe taking it out on Summer a little more than he had any right to; they had landed in Phoenix three hours ago, and from when he had discovered the car onward, he had been tormenting her the whole time.  
"Shut up! James, I'm driving; I'll kill us." Summer forced her Versace up her nose and scowled. But as she saw his expression, she softened. "Well, I don't suppose I thought that either. Still, I never imagined that Lila's been on death row for the past five years. If it were up to me, this would be a goddamn assassination mission."  
"You still hate her for killing your sister, don't you?"  
"You expect me just to forgive her?" Summer turned to face James, swerving madly and almost taking the bonnet off of a Prius behind her in the process. "James, Hope was twenty-nine. She was engaged, she'd just started her career as an agent and quite frankly she had an absolute hell of a lot to give. And then Lila took it all away from her before it could even start."  
Summer was cut off by the GPS telling her; 'You have reached your destination'. She pulled the car to a halt and curled her lip. "We're supposed to stay...in that?" The sign in front claimed that the dismal heap of stone was in fact the 'Phoenix National Motel', but neither agent was overly impressed by it. "She never was too classy when it came to choosing hotels."  
"If that's 'not too classy' then I don't want to see a complete hole. I'd rather stay in a morgue." James leaned over and locked the car as Summer made to get out. "Not on my life."  
"You wanna go somewhere else? I do." Summer turned on the ignition again and tapped 'Phoenix five star hotels' into her phone's search engine.  
"I most certainly do. And I've already got a cover story. We're teachers on sabbatical and we've just won the lottery, but it's a spur of the moment thing and we don't have a reservation."  
"What makes me think you've used that one before?"

* * *

"Why the hell did it have to be me?" Eve sobbed into Q's shoulder, the pair sat outside a doctor's office upon hearing the results of Eve's latest test. "I never bloody asked for any of this! Why me?"  
"Eve, it's going to be fine, don't worry. Do you mind if I go make a phone call?"  
"Fine, but as long as it's not my parents. They hate MI6 and they don't know about this. They said that something like this would happen. The last thing I want is them turning up here just to say 'I told you so'."  
"Eve, you really think I would do that?" Q stood up, leaving Eve by herself. He pushed open the door to the gents' toilets, and before locking himself in a cubicle, he hit his phone's speed dial button.

* * *

"I told you not to get a double suite," Summer scowled at James over her sunglasses as he finished lugging the last of their suitcases through the door and Summer noticing in anguish that not only were they sharing a room but a bed just to make matters worse. "There's only one bloody room!"  
"That's a problem because?"  
"I know about your reputation," she said flatly. "And I'm not the kind of person who's just going to strip and let you do whatever the hell you want to me because you say so."  
"Oh, I think you are." Summer noticed his hand playing around with the neck strap of her halter. Oh, crap, just when she had decided to wear a top that she never wore a bra with. He seemed to know this as well.  
"What makes you think that?"  
The halter was undone and he gently pulled the front of it down, exposing just about all of her bare chest. "You're doing it now." She smiled, giving in to his cheeky flirtatiousness.  
"Oh, James..."

* * *

"No, thank you," M turned away the waiter carrying around a tray of champagne as she suffered through some MP's election party, her stupid diamante high heels hurting her feet already and a half-empty glass - definitely not her first - in her hand. She had expressly told Tanner to try and lose this invite, but for once he hadn't managed to do as he was told, so she was having to pay the price for it. "Any more and I'm afraid I'd subject you to a performance of me standing on the table with my knickers around my ankles singing 'I am Sixteen Going On Seventeen." This had been something she had ended up doing before and had scarcely been able to live down. She turned to the PM and Foreign Secretary in front of her, hoping that her lipsticked grimace looked vaguely like a smile and letting out a somewhat high-pitched false laugh. She felt something buzzing inside her clutch purse, and said with another slight grimace; "Sorry, it's my son. Do you mind if I take this?"

M left the room, hitting 'answer call' as she did.  
"Hello...do you want to be called M or Mum right now?"  
"Well, I think it's Evelyn at the moment; I'm at some bloody cocktail party, so I really don't mind which. Look, can I say that this is some kind of family crisis and that I have to leave, because I'm going insane here. I'm totally surrounded by idiots, namely the same idiot who almost had me fired just before the Casino Royale case."  
"Well, Mum, here's the thing. It actually kind of is. It's about Eve."  
"Oh, god, what's wrong?" The panic in M's voice was obvious.  
"Well, she had new tests done and the good news is that the damage to her spine is reversible. The bad is that they'd have to operate tomorrow before the swelling around it gets any worse. And even though everyone thought that she'd miscarried after the incident, but turns out she didn't. But the real problem is that they can't do the op on her spine while she's pregnant. They just gave her the choice of a c-section tonight or an abortion, and because she's only six months down the line, the chance of the baby surviving at this stage is crazy low and even if it did, there's only a fifty-fifty chance of Eve pulling through her major surgery. Mum, help, seriously. I'm bloody terrified." M heard him crying on the other end of the line. She had never wanted to hug him so badly in her entire life. "I've got the choice to lose my unborn child, the chance to lose the woman I love and...Help..."

* * *

"David..." There was tears in Eve's eyes as Q came back, her hands resting protectively over the bump of her stomach. "This is hard, but I spoke to the doctor a few minutes ago. I'm going through with both lots of surgery. They're taking me in for c-section in about an hour."  
"Oh, Eve..." Q was still crying too, and he hugged her, him shaking with gasping sobs. "God, I'm so worried..."  
She put on a brave face. "I just want my life back. I want to be able to stand and go back to work and just be a normal mum to our kid, and so help me I'm bloody well going to."


	20. I Don't Want The World to See Me

**This is going to be the last chapter from Lila's POV for reasons that will become apparent later and the story is now beginning to draw to a close :( **

**WARNING: Self harm and suicide will follow thas and there will be a considerable amount of blood. Don't say I didn't warn you.**

* * *

Lila sobbed into her hands as she watched her life crumble and fall apart right in front of her. She was no longer herself. She had lost her personality, her family, friends and everything else. Nothing mattered to her any more, and what had she done about that? Taken her anger out on everyone that had crossed her path. Five people had died at her hands, another seven just by 'point and click'. Where had that left her? She was in jail in America and she was going to die in three days. But she just didn't care any more.

Lila was just an alias; a mask to protect her true identity, the only innocence she had left - Zurine Rodriguez. But as her father had died in her arms that one awful night in the Skyfall chapel, that girl who had once been her had died with him.

Zurine Martinique Rodriguez, the girl named after an island, was dead...And Lila missed her.

Lila smashed her fist against the wall, screaming bloody murder, tears streaming down her face. She was crying for herself, for him, for Zurine; the girl who she had once been. "I know that what I've done was wrong, and I'm sorry, okay?" She was screaming at M now, that goddamn silver-haired harpy who had destroyed her father and her now too. "I know that you're planning to bust me out of here, interrogate me and then shoot me yourself, but that won't happen."

Her thumbnail was digging hard into the vein of her other wrist, and she gave a content half-smile as scarlet beads of blood formed around it. With every drop of red she saw, a weight lifted from her. She bent her hand back, pulling the skin of her arm taut and tore hard down her wrist. The gash opened and as Lila watched her life spilling out of her, she threw back her head and laughed, cutting more lines into her arm to form a word. She couldn't take it any more, and as she was slowly released from the harsh, cold reality of life, she felt happy for the first time since what felt like forever. "Well, you won't get to. I'm going to tell you where I'm going. Or at least where I want to be. I want to go back to the island, just the two of us - me and my father - before we got caught up in your damn whirlwind of crazy. Back when and where the world. Made. Sense."

Lila looked down at her blood all over the floor and up her arms as her vision became hazy. She knew that she was bleeding to death, but she didn't give a damn, She wanted to. The words "I'm coming, Papi..." slipped from her lips as she slumped and blacked out, the one word etched on her bloody arm faced outwards.

HEATHER


	21. At The End Of The Day

**Lilylunapotter142, I'm afraid that finding out what happens to Eve will be my big finish. This story will end this weekend, there's just this chapter and the epilogue to go. A bit sad, but o well :')**

* * *

"007, have you two actually done anything apart from lie about drinking and having sex?" James held the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he let M's dressing down wash straight over his head, then sat down on the corner of the bed where his mission partner, Summer, was sitting with a laptop across her knees.  
"I've mostly been doing what you said. Summer's having a stab at hacking the prison computer system right now."  
"Well let me talk to her!"

James rolled his eyes as he handed the phone over to Summer, then lay back, fondling her hair. Summer shrugged away from him, lost in conversation with her mother. "Hello, M?...Yes...I'm trying...They've got Q's security program installed; every time I try to get into it, the codes change. It's kind of like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube that's fighting back...I know that's what he said, but...No, nothing so far...Should I try and leak it to his computer?...Oh...I see...Right...008 out."

Summer turned round. "Assuming you heard all that, I'm getting nowhere. This is going to go completely tits up, I can tell. But-" Summer was cut off by her mobile ringing again. James managed to get to it first, and he heard the abrupt tone of M's voice in his ear. All she said was one sentence before she hung up. "007, put CNN on, now."

James for once did as he was told, and flicked on the television. The fear inside him rose with every word that left the anchor's lips until he thought that he would explode.

'_Now, our main story this morning; death row cyber-terrorist Zurine Martinique Rodriguez, who goes under the alias of Lila Silva, had committed suicide in Arizona Max Prison mere hours before her execution by fatal injection. A quick warning, some viewers may find the images shown in the next report disturbing. _

_'For those unsure who Lila Silva was, she was convicted of international security breach, terrorism and attempted murder in late 2006 following hacking a CIA database and altering mission plans, in the process attempting to kill several of the organization's operatives. She was given the death penalty in 2007, but escaped a high-security prison just mere months after her sentence was passed. _

_'She is thought to have killed herself in the early hours of yesterday morning by means of cutting her wrists, though with what weapon it is uncertain. She was found with the initials " H.E.A.T.H.E.R" scored into her arm, though investigators aren't treating this as anything suspicious-'_

James shut the TV off, hastily scrawling the letters onto his hand. " H.e.a.t.h.e.r...that's heather. But what the hell is that meant to mean?"  
"I haven't got a bloody clue. But what did I say about this going wrong?"  
"Summer, you can have your 'I told you so' moment later. We need to tell M."  
"Who died and put you in charge?"  
James couldn't resist the opportunity to make one of his trademark awful jokes. "Lila."  
"Not. Funny."

* * *

"What do you mean she's gone and bloody killed herself?!" M shouted down the phone to James. "And are you aware that it's two o'clock in the morning here? I'm actually at home; you two are just keeping me awake with all this."  
"I mean exactly what I said. And does the word 'heather' mean anything to you?"  
"Not really, no. But-" M cut herself off as a thought met her. Surely to god Lila hadn't had the thought to do what M thought she had done, had she? By the looks of things, she had, however. "Wait, Heather Cassidy; she's the woman who's been replacing Eve as my secretary! Surely she can't be-" M hung up at that. More by accident than anything else, but now that she had done it, she had to call Tanner.  
"Hello?" the muffled reply of her half-asleep chief of staff gave M a little comfort.  
'Tanner, 00s 7 and 8 are on to something. I need you to come into MI6 now, and call that Heather woman that's been working in my front office for the past while as well. We need her."  
"What on earth for?"  
"Lie detector test."

* * *

Q smiled through his slight tears as he sat outside of Eve's hospital room, hastily tapping a block text into his phone.

_'Hello, all, Q/David here. Just thought I aught to let everyone know that baby Judi-Em Hope Eve Bonham-Carter was born yesterday morning. She's absolutely tiny, but despite being two months premature she's doing reasonably well and I absolutely love her to bits already. As for Eve, she came out of surgery on her spine about ten minutes ago. They're planning to keep her under anesthetic until she's healed enough for it not to be too painful for her, but she's pulled through and everything seems to be looking up. Fingers, toes, eyes and everything else crossed for both my beautiful girls :) xx' _


	22. Epilogue

_~EPILOGUE~_

Despite her best intentions, M's 'voluntary retirement' was not forgotten about, and she left MI6 for the final time three weeks following the death of LILA SILVA. She assumed her old name of Evelyn Cameron, and was successed as head of MI6 by BILL TANNER. However, she finds herself not incredibly adept to the life of a normal person, and does find herself lending a hand (and on occasion taking over) mission control quite often.

JAMES BOND and SUMMER BONHAM-CARTER were sent home from Arizona on the same day that they found out about Lila's suicide. James has found himself in what can only be described as his first ever long-running romantic relationship with Summer, and she is pregnant with their son, who is due to be born in late 2013.

HEATHER CASSIDY gave a full confession to her and GARETH MALLORY's involvement with Lila and her father. Mallory was the main leak whilst Raoul Silva was alive, and she was apparently forced into it by him when he started getting orders from Lila. She is currently standing trial for breach of the 1987 Secret Services Act and is expected to serve a minimum of eighteen years in prison.

JUNE BONHAM-CARTER made a full recovery from injuries sustained in the attack by Lila which killed her younger sister HOPE.

BRYONIE HART (the moody receptionist whom M encountered the day Eve was attacked) lost her job after various complaints were made about her moody attitude.

EVE MONEYPENNY recovered fully from her surgery, which, despite the 50/50 chance of it actually doing anything, worked in the exact way it was supposed to. With the aid of crutches, she took her first steps since she was stabbed by Lila on Brighton beach whilst on her daughter JUDI-EM's first holiday.

Q (aka DAVID BONHAM-CARTER) proposed to Eve the day that she and their daughter were released from hospital. They are due to be married as soon as Judi-Em turns one, and Eve is currently expecting their second child.

* * *

_Everything will be alright in the end. So if it is not alright, then it is not yet the end..._

_Sonny, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel_


End file.
